


Through the Sketchy Times

by ChocolatePecan



Series: A Place for Tomorrow [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Art, Dedication, Drawing, Ficlet, Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fill, creation as a source of comfort, noct appreciates prompto in thought and deed but not in word, prompto is an artist in more ways than one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 14:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14595276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocolatePecan/pseuds/ChocolatePecan
Summary: The air is thick with ash on the Rock of Ravatogh tonight, and Prompto can't sleep. It's not all bad, though. From Owlyss Haven he can see almost all of Lucis.It's been a while since rest has seemed so far away, but when things are like this there is one activity that always soothes him.(Don't worry, it's SFW).





	Through the Sketchy Times

**Author's Note:**

> This is another prompt fill from an 'inspire me!' request I made on my tumblr (details in the end notes).
> 
> This one's for @puffbirdstudio and their prompt words: deliberate, Prompto, Rock of Ravatogh, and pencil. I hope you enjoy it <3

The wind is blowing from the north-east, carrying flakes of volcanic ash across Owlyss Haven. It’s more uncomfortable to breathe up here than usual, and Prompto pulls his shirt up over his nose and mouth to keep out the worst of the debris.

Living in such close quarters with the guys means Prompto’s picked up some new habits. Lately it’s been Noct’s penchant for sleeping anywhere. They’ve spent most of the last week taking cat-naps in a deep dungeon, with the worst of Eos’ beasts growling in the next chamber. Before that, Prompto had found himself fully rested after a night in the middle of the Myrlwood, surrounded by water and with bugs on all sides. And before that, he’d camped out comfortably on the Rock of Ravatogh, cooled by the breeze and relaxed by the smell of Ignis’ Crispy Zu Skewers.

With all that sleeping experience behind him, resting on Ravatogh for a second night shouldn’t be a problem. But, it is. Trying to sleep had only encouraged cycling thoughts of Ardyn’s sneering face, Iron Giants rising from the road like landed battleships, and the enduring fear that he’s seen the faces of those Magitek Troopers somewhere before. Rather than wake anyone else with his restlessness, Prompto had put his thumb over the tent zip as he pulled it and stepped outside.

He’s been sitting in a camping chair for the last fifteen minutes. Beneath him he can just see the ringroad that declares, _this is the end of Lucis: go back, lonely traveller_. He’s a little calmer here. The landscape rolls out before him, a carpet of black with brightly-lit outposts that can be joined across it in a dot-to-dot.

The Disc – something he frequently mistook for a nearby haven at first – glows its reassuring glow, even without the Archean to hold it up. Lestallum soars like a lighthouse on his left, preventing daemon attacks rather than shipwrecks. Somewhere out there is Hammerhead, and the bastion of garage excellence that is Cindy. Their light is too many miles away to be seen.

Before the fall, Prompto would have been able to see Insomnia from here. He imagines it as it must have looked; a tall domed mass lit blue twenty-four hours a day. His city was always alive with endeavour. Whatever you wanted, you could get. You just needed to know where to look. Need a new lens for that camera? No problem, Forty-Fifth Street. Want to test out a new mp3 player? No problem, Fifteen and North – but be careful of the seedy dudes standing outside the bakery on the corner.

Prompto will never forget the view of his city burning. It’s been months, but in quiet moments it still invades. It’s hard for Prompto to think of it as his loss though, not when Noct lost his birthright, his dad, and the citizens he was meant to protect. Gladio lost his dad, too. Ignis keeps everything about himself too close to his chest to tell what his losses were.

Even so, the little house that had sheltered Prompto with its four walls had been a safe place, if not a lively place. He still remembers his mom standing at the kitchen counter with a college textbook, his father sleeping in front of the TV. All that is probably gone. His parents haven’t called. They weren’t among the refugees in Lestallum. He’s lost count of the messages he’s left.

The privation out here hasn’t been lost on Prompto, either. Lucis is a beautiful country, sure. Beautiful and dangerous. Abandoned and listless. There’s war wreckage to be seen at every new turn, each piece bigger than the last. Trains, fallen in ditches and left to rust. Telegraph poles split in half by something that can snap concrete as easily as pulling the tab on a can of Ebony. There are homes left to ruin, and the untilled ground rises to take back cars and walls and relics.

Outside the Wall, Lucis is gorgeous and strong and doomed, all at once.

Prompto’s taken photos of the night view already. They’re something to show the guys tomorrow night. There always has to be something to show them, because he wants to keep earning his place alongside them. He even shows them the failed shots – they’re worth a laugh, at least.

There is an activity he usually keeps for himself, though. Something he hasn’t done for a long time.

He still has his Assassin’s Festival notebook and half the pencil he bought with his last few medallions. Mostly, the book’s pages are covered in the notes he made while he and Noct were deciphering challenge clues. A few pages have been filled with ballistics notes. A couple he uses to keep his rep counts. There’s still plenty of pages left.

He turns to a fresh leaf, then looks up to deliberate over the landscape. He taps the pencil on his cheek. Sketches a line a third of the way up the page, then looks up again. Mentally notes the height of Lestallum’s power plant. Considers the placement of the Disc.

The chafe of the pencil is soothing on the page as he draws a series of dots, each one bigger than the last. Nobody’s going to see this picture, but if they did he’d want them to be looking straight at the biggest dot. That way the image grows outwards from the centre of their vision like an ink drop on silk.

Under his hand, the view from Ravatogh expands. He draws around the lit outposts to emphasise the light, adding only the tiniest pencil lines to show where the gas stations and lodgings are. He adds Lestallum, and gives it distinct, solid lines befitting a tower of faith in a country with no capital city.

In his mind’s eye, the old capital remains. The biggest dot of all goes to Insomnia. He draws the Wall from his memory of being underneath it, curving it for the external view like the top half of a globe. Beneath that he adds the Citadel’s soaring towers, its hundreds of tiny windows intimated in the turns of his hand. He sketches lesser buildings beneath, but consciously leaves them unfinished. They stand, as they always did, in the shadow of the Royal Palace.

As the sky begins to lighten, Prompto darkens with the pencil. He leaves vacancies for warmth and for light. Pale grey adds depth; dark grey stands in for the night sky.

On paper Prompto can recreate the grandeur he didn’t get to see, the shape of Insomnia against the unspoiled patina of stars above Lucis. Only in his imagination can he recreate the Citadel for Noct. It won’t make up for his dad, and it can’t heal his grief. If Prompto could take all that away, if he could make this drawing real and by that make everything whole again, he would.

All he can do is stand by Noct and really, it’s all he’s ever wanted to do. He waited a long time for a friend. Only his own death will separate them now. He owes it to Noct not to add that to his burdens.

Prompto closes his eyes and settles back into the chair. The act of drawing is a comfort, a place to concentrate his thoughts until they disappear. He can never recognise the exact moment that happens. He only knows that, when it does, the thoughts are replaced by a spiritual communion with some otherwise unseen, unheard solace inside his own self. 

The images from before – of Ardyn, and monsters, and eerie soldiers – have faded. He controls them now, not the other way around. The wind has dropped, and the volcanic ash with it. The breeze is fresher as the distant grasslands start to wake. Prompto senses his consciousness reaching to swap with sleep, and the darkness beneath his eyelids gets darker still.

It won’t be the first time he’s fallen asleep in a camping chair.

Prompto is called back from his doze by the sound of something metal being pulled across the haven. He drops the notebook and pencil as he tries to stand, adrenaline overriding his ability to sit. “Whuh?”

“What, the tent not good enough for you?” Noct stops at his side, and the camping chair he’d been dragging stops grinding on the stone. He picks up the notepad and pencil before he sits.

“What are you doing out here?” Prompto feels like he’s been caught borrowing the school’s camera tripod without permission again. He descends into his chair.

Noct casts his gaze to Prompto expectantly. “When you have to get up for a pee, you kinda notice when one of your party isn’t where you left them.”

Prompto points to himself. “Me? I’m just… appreciating the breeze.”

“In the middle of the night?” Noct yawns and pushes against the backrest. He stretches his legs out, then crosses them at the ankles. “What are you really doing out here?” he asks, flicking through the notebook.

“Dude. Not cool.” Prompto tries to take the notebook back, but Noct’s already turned to the drawing of his imagined Insomnia.

Noct doesn’t move, other than to make a line of his lips.

Prompto doesn’t know where to look. “Sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that.” The last thing he’d intended was to cause Noct pain.

“Why?”

“I just thought it’d be a good thing to draw, you know? We’ve never seen it from the outside. It must have been a really amazing view from up here, and–”

“No.” Noct looks up from the notebook. “I meant, why wasn’t I supposed to see it?” The breeze becomes a wind, tousling Noct’s bedhead.

Prompto presses his thumbs together, and looks in the direction of the ringroad: _this is the end of Lucis_. He makes himself turn to face Noct when he says, “Just thought you wouldn’t want reminders.”

Noct looks back down at the drawing. He’s quiet when he says, “It was your home, too.”

“Yeah.” Prompto thinks of the woman who tried her best for him, the man who never could, and that little suburban house coddled in the shadow of the wall. “It was my home, too.” He rubs his nose with a knuckle.

Noct runs a fingertip over the pencil lines. “I didn’t know you could draw. I can see your photographer’s eye for the aesthetic in here.”

“Yeah?” Prompto can’t resist the grin. Noct’s not one to give idle praise.

“Yeah.” Noct leans forward with his elbows on his knees and the notebook open in his hands. He tilts his head into the wind and closes his eyes. Prompto wonders if he’s imagining Insomnia back where it ought to be, but lets him disappear into his thoughts; whatever they are, he deserves to have them in private.

When Noct opens his eyes again, he says, “Can I keep this?” and lifts the page with finger and thumb. Prompto takes the notebook, and as soon as it’s in his hands he tears the page straight out – just as though it’s a blank needed for a shopping list. He thrusts it towards Noct with a smile.

_This, and everything else, for you, always. All I have and all I am are yours_. He can only think it, but if thinking it could make it tangible it would rise up like Titan and rebuild Insomnia all on its own.

Noct smiles and gives a nod as he takes the drawing, and whatever he’s thinking it takes a long time. He looks down at the picture as he slowly – and with much more care than Prompto showed – folds it in half. He runs his fingernail down the centre and stows the image of his nation in his jacket pocket.

The pinkish hues of early morning have spread to the rocks and steam vents below. It’s still too dark to make out anything substantial, but the area’s igneous plates have started to shine against the dirt.

Prompto’s lack of sleep is starting to catch up with him. “We’ve got time for a nap, right?”

“You’re talking to the king of nap-time.” Noct rests both hands on his stomach and closes his eyes. “And your king says, ‘so be it’.”

Prompto rests back into his chair and folds his hands on his stomach, too. “What does my buddy say?”

Noct already sounds half asleep. “He says, ‘Just nap already, before Ignis gets up and we have to help with breakfast’.”

“Good call.” Prompto repositions himself for comfort and looks over at Noct’s chest. His signature ability to sleep at a moment’s notice doesn’t seem to be letting him down. As Prompto watches, his breathing enters a restful rhythm.

It doesn’t take long for Prompto to follow his buddy and king into sleep. It’s with that same trust and heart that he follows him into the unknown every day. As hard as things are, there’s nothing else like it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still taking prompts! Come over to my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/opheliacrow) and give me a word, a FFXV character, a thing, and a place in Eos, and I’ll give you 500 words. You can ask anonymously if you'd like.
> 
> ...Going by my previous examples it'll be a lot more than 500 words, but I guarantee you that as a minimum XD;;


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